An elderly Japanese veteran’s recollection of how he ordered his men to use a Chinese prisoner as a target for bayonet drill, reasoning that the soldiers needed to develop some “backbone,” is proving highly controversial online.

The 90-year-old man, a resident of Wakayama prefecture, recounts how he served in the Imperial Japanese Army and was dispatched to Jiangxi in southern China in 1941, aged 20.

The men forced Chinese to provide them food, but he recalls doubts – “We were taught that this was a holy war to save the people of China, but I wondered if this was really right.” He was not told of the laws of war.

He experienced bitter fighting on the frontlines, and recalls that when not fighting he spent his time being beaten and whipped by superiors.

By 1943 he was a corporal, and in command of 5 conscripts himself. He tells how, in order to put some backbone into his men, he ordered them to bayonet a Chinese prisoner – a man in his mid twenties.

His hands were tied and the corporal ordered his men to charge the man one by one with fixed bayonets, each running 10m and then stabbing him in the chest. The prisoner screamed as he realised what his captors were about to do, but the soldiers had soon killed him.

After returning home he did not speak of the incident, though his recollection of the events never faded – “I did an inhuman thing.”

“My ignorance [of international law] caused me to give that order. We lost our reason in that kill or be killed world back then.”

Despite speaking about his war experiences repeatedly, only in 2010 did he reveal he ordered the murder – “If we don’t tell people, I fear the world may again descend into war.”

“You won’t instil any backbone in anyone by killing dirty Koreans or whatever anyway. Maybe if you killed hundreds like in the Nanjing massacre, but that was faked anyway.”

“He’s a B-class war criminal – he admits it. There should be no problem executing him – Mainichi did for the two officers in that contest.”

“This old man is not to be believed. He has no proof and it is all subjective. This biased newspaper probably made it up anyway.”

“International law is just an excuse – what about America’s indiscriminate bombing and nuclear attacks?”

“Prisoners of war were considered despicable cowards in Imperial Japan, and the feeling seems to be they didn’t deserve to live in case they committed further acts of treachery. And all human lives were treated like disposable trash in that period…”

“Maybe in Japan, but other countries treated PoWs well.”

“There’s no statute of limitations for war crimes is there? Won’t he be tried?”

“There are no laws against war crimes in Japan. As a result there are no war criminals in Japan. The A/B/C class war criminals were just a farce made up by the UN.”

“They should really try him. The death penalty is only fitting.”

“They had 3 million troops in China so it probably did happen here and there. The net right wingers are always babbling about their horrible delusions that Nanjing, comfort women and Unit 731 were all made up.”

“It was just him being an idiot. I wish he’d stop saying the whole army was bad just because of what he did. At least, I wouldn’t have killed a prisoner.”

“If he really was ashamed of what he did, why didn’t he tell the Chinese and accept their punishment? This is a clear war crime. He didn’t think the prisoner was even a human being, and just used him as an object for his men to train on as he thought they needed it, and ordered it all. But when he lost the war he ran off.

It can hardly be called sincere for him not to confess for all this time. He should have apologised to the prisoner by taking his own life. What a spineless coward.”

“Wasn’t the prisoner a guerilla? You don’t have to treat them as PoWs…”

“For doing something so atrocious you just want to tell him to go and slice open his own belly, don’t you? This old fool is busy shifting the blame for his actions – I hope he dies soon. And to think this guy is probably getting a war pension…”

“Note – ‘he thought it necessary’ – it wasn’t the army’s fault, this was just one crazy soldier’s decision!”

“All responsibility lies with the Showa Emperor. As he has inherited the responsibility, executing the Heisei Emperor is fine too.”

“Japan took relatively good care of its prisoners. This was just one man’s actions.”

“The net rightist filter:

Q1. Is he alive?

YES→ to Q2

NO→An honoured spirit of Yasukuni

Q2. Did he say something?

YES→ to Q3

NO→A Hero of the Empire

Q3. Was it favourable to the Imperial Army?

YES→ A Hero of the Empire

NO→Traitor”

“Another fanciful lie. There’s no way a mere corporal could have decided what to do with prisoners. You underestimate the Imperial Army.”

“They don’t even give his name – just another fake.”

“They should turn him over to China.”

“You guys, denying anything inconvenient to your point of view is really bad. Scepticism is important, but denying everything based on ideology is the same level as those dirty Koreans.”

Whoaaaaaa, people in your father's POW camp were subjected to severe frostbite in their limbs, then had each limb amputated one by one without anesthesia, then had their still-live head and torso experimented upon with biological weapons?

War in itself is a crime. All who participate in it are guilty. War doesn't create heroes or villains because, at the end of the day, all soldiers who survived a battlefield have blood on their hands.

The rom,atic garbage is only suitable for Hollywood. Veterans could tell you something about the mental and physical traumas that will haunt them for the rest of their miserable lives.
It's really no use to shove around the moral highground and pass judgments on who's the worst "war-criminal" and which side killed more people.

It's not surprising, we saw what the Japanese did to prisoners on the islands that were being recaptured from them and other areas as well as heard the stories of what they did to the Koreans.

To stop a way of life is about what world wars are fought for in the first place. To stop a very bad way of life that causes even more and more pain upon every one. This guys story is just one of a million but one that was told, the rest took what they did to their graves.

Yeah , but not justn't that, a long ago japanese has colonize indonesian just for 3 years, but it worse than when netherland colonize, they make the people to work like an animal, even they don't care about their health , they kidnap young girl to become their army's *** slave . ., and they used the people to make their pawn's for war, and after they lose they left the country without any reciprocation. and now they angry just because of the past, and so they forget about their sins. . . what the heck is this . .

ttp://www.sankakucomplex.com/2010/03/04/ldp-japan-must-introduce-conscription/ (Add the "h" in front of the address)

Well, 2ch, here was your chance to sign up for the Imperial Army and show your patriotic fervour at last and teach these Chinese and Korean upstarts to learn their place and not challenge your beloved Empire for doing what it should do.

And how did you react?

You all bloody chickened out.

And thanks to you guys holing up and playing eroge all day, China has now taken over your country as the 2nd largest economy in the world.

And if you guys believe fervently in 1940s militarism, do you think a government like that would have allowed the likes of you to even survive? They would have thrown you in the concentration camps to rot, while poking bayonets at your beloved 2D girl figures.

If possible, these xenophobic hikkikomori Scum should be gathered in one spot (away from all the other sensible Japanese people) and have a 3rd nuke tossed at them. They're useless to society and they can't procreate (if jacking off to 2D girls is their idea of procreating), so they might as well rid themselves from the human gene pool once and for all.

Lol, from most of the comments here I can tell that most of you are chinese dick riders. Poor helpless china, the victim of Japan...... what a load of shit seriously.

How can they claim to be victims when they are doing the same thing today in Tibet, beating up defenseless monks who cant fight back. Chinese propaganda at its best, pretending to be victims so that no one pays attention to the brutalities that they are committing today.

In WWII there really was good and evil sides.
Japan unfortunately was on the side of evil in that war.

As for the US's use of nukes it was only after much deliberation and in the end the action resulted in less deaths on both sides.
An invasion of Japan would have resulted in far more death then those two bombs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

The generally inexcusable treatment of POWs ,use of germ warfare and the vile actions at unit 731 in China probably helped the decision.

The irony is that surrendering to the US may have been the one thing that saved Japan from Soviet occupation and allowed it to quickly recover and become a great economic power.

Much less deaths than an unnecessary invasion, you mean. America wanted Japan to agree to an unconditional surrender (even Churchill thought they were insane) and turn the country into another puppet state. And even if the Soviets had occupied Japan, they did the same to East Germany. East Germany may have suffered greatly at their hands, but nowhere near as much as Japan did with the bombings.

Why do we always have to try to justify the unjustifiable? And why do we have to stick up for one country when putting others down? Germany, the USSR and Japan may have been the worst overall, but the USA's atomic bombings are definitely among that war's shameful "highlights".

Just about all participants in WW2 behaved despicably. Understandable, given the vicious desperation of that war, but not forgiveable.

yeah, while pardoning them for their warcrimes and even lets them continue their human experimentations with CIA support.

It's known fact that the US pardoned the key scientists of the Unit 731 in exchange for cooperation in continueing their germ-warfare research program under the command of the US.
They even let the same people (Dr. Shiro Ishii for exp.), who killed and tortured thousands of people with their experimentations, to continue their researches on living humans during Korean War, with Chinese and North Korean POW's as victims.

And all the results from these research, was used to develop germs and agents for chemical and biological warfare, as used in Agent Orange during Vietnam War.

If there is an absolute prince of evil in this world, then it's the USA with their equally evil cronies under their protective organisation, called 'the free world'.

As for what I think, it happened decades ago and the guy's remorseful. No reparations can be made over even one unnecessary death, so just get over it. This world needs to grow up on so many levels, seriously...

I feel like some people fail to see this for what it is. If true then it is just another story about the horrors of war and the monstrous capabilities of human nature. If fake then its a poor peice of propaganda since I almost feel as sorry for the old man as the guy that was bayonetted to death for having to live with the guilt. In reallity, war is ugly and rittled with a history of unforgivable and unspeakable deeds that were commited in the name of the cause or patriotism. Im not saying war justifies these actions but its no reseason to condem a 90 year old man for something he did ages ago; you learn from it and move on trying not to this kind of stuff happen agian in the future.

For those of you claiming fire bombing of Tokyo, check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Firebombing_leaflet.jpg

We warned them to get out...so as to limit civilian casualties. We do that nowadays too....its called PsyOps. We have USAF/Army units trained on this thing....only with modern channels(TV, paper, radio, internet?)

The South Korean and Chinese fabricate and shout these.
They always say, "facts...facts...facts...", but do not present the precise data. (It is not possible to do. Because such a thing doesn't exist. )
The historical science researcher in the United States investigated various data and proved there was no such facts.
They fabricate fake stories, and in every case demand money from Japan.
These are the activities concerning finance.

As Chinese I'm pretty cool with all those right-wingers and racists ranting about 'us dirty Chinese', since it just proof that they feel threatened and cornered by China's growing power.

Not only did China overtook Japan in terms of PPP like a decade ago, but also in terms of GDP recently, making it the second largest economy in the world.

And reading the 2010 DOD Pentagon Report about the Chinese Military, and imagining all the wet panties of fat, middle-aged american politicians, I can surely say that the century of weakness and humiliation for the Chinese people is finally over.

It's now up to Japan to bend over. And no amount of sucking off America will save them in the long run.